Book considers Ivor Goodson, the travelling organic intellectual
Fri, 24 Jan 2014 14:13:00 GMT
Researcher’s new book Reading and Teaching Ivor Goodson explores his influential view of curriculum and teaching
IVOR Goodson is a widely-travelled intellectual who has had a massive influence on current debates about education in the UK and overseas. Now, a University of Huddersfield researcher has become a major conduit for Goodson’s ideas and arguments.
Dr Yvonne Downs – who is a Research Assistant for the University’s Financial Ethics and Governance Research Group, based in the Business School – has authored Reading and Teaching Ivor Goodson. It covers many aspects of his life and work, including his influential views on curriculum and teachers.
The book is aimed at students and teachers of education, plus teachers and educational researchers, as well as general readers with an interest in the history and politics of education. It was written with the full co-operation of Ivor Goodson and it includes a series of reconstructed conversations between the author and her subject.
“That’s what Ivor likes the best!” said Dr Downs. “He says he doesn’t really trust the written word and that he likes embodied conversation.”
The UK’s national curriculum
Ivor Goodson describes himself as a “travelling organic intellectual”, said Dr Downs. He spends a large part of his year collaborating in research projects in countries as diverse as Canada, Brazil, Norway and Japan.
He has ranged widely in his intellectual interests, but one of his key areas of research is the school curriculum. His views on issues such as the UK’s national curriculum are deeply nuanced, says Dr Downs. He would want more recognition of the work that teachers do and greater scope for their creative input.
“If an educational reform is made on the basis of politicians telling teachers what to do, it is going to fail – and educational reforms do, on the whole, fail. What Ivor would say is that if things are going to work they have to take teachers’ lives into account. It is not a question of who has the power, but how that power is exercised.”
Meeting Ivor
Dr Downs (pictured) is a former language teacher, at secondary schools and colleges in Harrogate and Huddersfield. Disillusion with developments in the profession led to a career switch into financial services and as a life coach, plus study for a PhD in education. Her experience in finance led to her appointment as a researcher at the University of Huddersfield, where she is currently examining a “virtue ethics framework” for the financial sector.
Having met Ivor Goodson at conferences and developed an interest in his ideas, particularly about life history, which had been an influence on her PhD research, she was asked by publishing company Peter Lang to write a new book on the thinker, and it took her back to the field of education.
Dr Downs confesses that when she quit teaching in the 1990s she had lost some of her idealism.
“But if at that stage I had read some of the work that Ivor had done I wouldn’t have felt so alone and I might have stayed in the profession!”
